


let there be love

by fairwinds09



Series: can't give you anything but love [1]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: (no not that those kind of kinks), (okay maybe a little of those kind of kinks but this is not really that kind of fic), F/M, figuring out the kinks, once again josh does not deserve her but here we are anyway, post-hawaii because yes we all assume hawaii is canon, season 7 behind the scenes, small slices of domesticity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27713602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairwinds09/pseuds/fairwinds09
Summary: In which Josh and Donna endeavour to figure out what life looks like now that they're together. Set during the end of Season 7 and continues post-show.
Relationships: Josh Lyman/Donna Moss
Series: can't give you anything but love [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2053545
Comments: 41
Kudos: 124





	1. a lark and a dove

**Author's Note:**

> I love these two so much, y'all. So very much. They are messy and difficult (and Josh 100% does not deserve her, let's all be aware of this) but they love each other so fiercely you can't help but want them to be happy. And since the writers apparently decided that we could only have nice things in tiny doses at the end of the series, I am joining legions of other writers in attempting to remedy that problem. 
> 
> This starts from Donna's POV, may end up switching to Josh's. We'll see where it takes me. 
> 
> Title from the Nat King Cole song, which is one of my favourites of his.

In all their time at the White House, eight-plus years of barely restrained longing, she never thought of Joshua Lyman as even remotely approaching sappy. He was a lot of things — loyal, sarcastic, big-hearted, stubborn — but not sappy. 

It turns out she was, in fact, wrong. 

She first begins to come to this realisation when they’re on their third day in Hawaii, lying on the beach working on their tans. (Actually, he’s working on a tan while she’s trying to avoid a blistering sunburn and sprouting freckles all over, but the tan thing sounds better.) He’s had two Mai Tais and she can already tell that between the sun and his delicate system he’s getting a bit tipsy. 

“Donna?” he says, sounding sleepy. She looks over to find him lying on his stomach with his head pillowed on his arms. She reaches out and skims her fingers over his back, just because she can. 

“Eeeee,” he squeaks when she gets too close to his ribs. “Don’t do that, that tickles.”

She grins and goes back to his shoulders. “What were you going to say?”

He hums into the cradle of his arms. 

“Oh, nothing,” he sighs. “Just...you looked pretty over there. In the sun with that hat. You always look pretty.”

She’s shocked into silence. It’s not that he hasn’t complimented her before, but it’s always been fraught with the knowledge that he’s not supposed to notice and she’s not supposed to want him to notice. This, this simple, uncomplicated admission, hits her deep in her gut. 

“Thank you,” she whispers when she can find her voice again. He smiles lazily, without opening his eyes. “You look good too.”

As compliments go, it’s nothing fancy. Certainly nothing his high-achieving, SAT verbal scoring mind would be impressed by. But she sees the flash of dimples and knows that he’s happy. 

“C’mere,” he says softly, raising his head up and turning on his side, and one warm hand comes to her cheek and draws her down for a kiss. 

It strikes her as their lips meet that maybe it can be like this for them. Maybe it can be this simple.


	2. ever and a day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes domesticity is easy. Sometimes it's terrifying. 
> 
> Sometimes it's both. 
> 
> (in which Josh irons a shirt and provokes a series of emotional confessions)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Our Love Is Here to Stay." As always, Ella sings it best.

She thought she knew what she was getting into, moving in with Josh. (Not that either of them has officially called it that, mind you, but that’s functionally what they’re doing.) She practically lived with him after Rosslyn, he would stay on her couch and yell at her roommate’s cats when he was drunk...suffice it say they were in each other’s spaces. Frequently. 

Somehow actually living together is quite different. 

For one thing, thus far he seems oddly tentative. She doesn’t think it’s that he minds her in his apartment all the time. It seems to have more to do with his fear that he’s going to do something to make her leave. For some reason she had expected him to be exactly the way he always was in the West Wing — loud and importunate and forgetting about other’s people’s existences because he got so focused on what he was doing. But he’s not, at least not here in their shared living space. It’s been nearly a month, and he’s still almost tiptoeing around her, remembering to put his laundry in the hamper and washing the dishes and tidying his papers off the ottoman so she’ll have a place to put her feet. 

It’s considerate, and sweet, and quite frankly it’s scaring her a little. 

She can’t help feeling that this isn’t real. She knows the real Josh Lyman. He’s difficult, messy, easy to love but hard to deal with a lot of the time. This careful, restrained person who darts looks at her out of the corners of his eyes is not the same man. She almost wants to push him to do something absurdly rude just to reassure herself that this is actually her Josh. 

She finally breaks the night she comes in and finds him ironing her shirt. First of all, she didn’t even know he knew how to iron. She assumed he sent all his clothes to the dry cleaner’s. Second, it’s not even his shirt. She had gotten out his ironing board and plugged in the iron to heat up because she needed a fresh shirt for in the morning, and here he is, neatly pressing in between the buttons, and nothing’s burned or scorched or anything. 

She loses it. 

“What are you doing?” she asks, and her tone is far too sharp, because his head whips up and she sees that his eyes are startled. 

“Ironing?” he says. 

“Yes, I can see that!” she snaps. “But that’s my shirt!”

His eyes get a little wider. “Yeah. I saw you had the iron plugged in, and I thought - ”

“I didn’t even know you could iron!”

He laughs a little. “I did my own shirts in college when I had to, and on my first job. The dry cleaner was too pricey.”

She’s not calming down, not at all. 

“You’re ironing my shirt,” she repeats for emphasis. He’s looking more and more confused. “Dammit, Josh…”

He frowns. “You didn’t want it ironed? You had it set out.”

She explodes. 

“I don’t get this!” she half-yells. “I don’t get it. This isn’t you, this isn’t how you are. I don’t even know this side of you.”

Now he looks panicked, and hurt. She feels a bit sick. 

“What do you mean, this isn’t how I am?”

She starts pacing, and it hits her how ironic this is — him ironing her shirt, her pacing and yelling. It’s like that Freaky Friday movie where people bodyswap. 

“You’re not...you’re not the guy who irons my shirt! Or the guy who washes the dishes every night, or the guy who remembers to make his bed. I have been around you enough in the past eight years to know that you do not make your bed every morning. And yet, this past month, every single day.”

His eyes are huge now. “It bugs you that I make the bed?” His voice slides up on the last word, and it reminds her of so many moments in the West Wing where he’d slide into that high register of disbelief or outrage or both. For some reason it’s oddly comforting. 

“Yes! No. I don’t know. It bugs me that it’s — that you — it doesn’t feel real. It still doesn’t feel real.”

He looks like she reached out and whacked him in the head with the iron. 

“What do you mean?” It’s a whisper, and it’s terrified, and it hurts her in all the places that have tried to keep him safe for nearly a decade. 

“I don’t know, Josh!” She’s hurting and she’s scared and she doesn’t want to ruin this, not after just a month. “It’s different than I expected. Me being here. With you.”

He sets the iron down carefully and switches it off. 

“What were you expecting?”

She stares at him helplessly. God, she loves this man, and she knows sometimes it’s going to be hard. Maybe she’s making it hard right now, she doesn’t know. Maybe she should just roll with this, accept it as a new part of who he is, but they’ve gotten locked in their patterns and she doesn’t know how to get out. 

“I don’t know…” she murmurs. “I thought...I thought you’d be messy. And that we’d fight sometimes, over stupid stuff, like the toothpaste tube or changing the toilet paper roll, or…”

“Or ironing a shirt?” he suggests, with a hint of bitterness. She shrugs, accepting the barb. 

“You were doing a really good job, by the way,” she says softly. “I didn’t expect that either.”

“So you thought I’d be an insensitive jerk and you’d have to pick up after me, is that it?”

She doesn’t say a word. She presses her lips together tightly, because that’s the crux of it. She expected living with him to be like working for him, and it’s not. 

“Dammit, Donna,” he says quietly, and his face has crumpled. “Why would you…”

“I didn’t know!” she says, spreading her hands wide, trying to defend herself. “I don’t...I’m sorry. I am. I don’t think you’re a jerk. I just...we had a rhythm, you know?”

He makes a frustrated noise in his throat. 

“Yes, and then you left, and I left, and we ended up working on a campaign together, and I’m not your boss anymore, Donna! I know I wasn’t always the best guy to work for. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not stupid. I know that. But I’m not that guy here, not with this. This is...this is…”

He stops talking, and his throat works as he swallows back whatever he was going to say. It drives her crazy. 

“This is what?” 

He shakes his head, his eyes bright with fear. 

“Josh.” His name comes out as a sigh. She steps over to him and without warning wraps her arms around him, tucks her head into his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you for ironing my shirt. It was a nice thing to do. Just tell me, okay? Just tell me.”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath and hugs her back. 

“I just...I’ve been careful, this past month. You weren’t wrong about that part.” 

He confesses it with his mouth next to her ear, and she holds onto him for the next part because she senses he needs the safety of not having to look her in the eye while he says it. 

“Okay,” she says softly, muffled into the fabric of his T-shirt. 

“This is...Donna, this is everything,” he murmurs, and she can feel the choke in his voice more than hear it. “I can’t screw this up. This is my chance with you, and I can’t screw it up.”

She can feel the tears coming, her mouth working and that hot feeling behind her eyes. 

“Joshua,” she whispers, and sniffles. “You are the most…”

He pulls back, and when he sees that she’s crying he gets a positively panicked look. 

“Donna, no, don’t - ”

She sniffles again and swipes ineffectually at her nose. 

“You are the sweetest man I think I have ever known,” she says definitively, and she watches the shock and then the relief pass over his face. “And it’s not that I don’t like you ironing my shirt. Or doing the dishes, or whatever. It’s just…”

She reaches for his hands while she thinks how to phrase the thing she wants to say, because her words matter right now. They matter very much. 

“I want to be with you even when you’re messy and loud and irritating, okay?” she says, rubbing his knuckles with her thumbs. “I want us to be real with each other. We’ve seen each other at our worst and at our best, and we’re still here. We’re still here.”

“Yeah?” he says, his eyes quirking up in that little-boy-hopeful look he has, the one that melts her heart. 

“Yeah,” she says, squeezing his hands hard. “I wanna love you even when you’re gross and annoying.”

He grins. “I’m very good at both those things.”

“Uh-huh.” She narrows her eyes at him. “No comments about my potentially gross and annoying habits, Joshua?”

He widens his eyes in a patently fake look of innocence and raises her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles like he’s a Shakespearean actor or somebody at a Renaissance fair. 

“I’m not gonna push my luck like that,” he says, but his eyes are dancing. She loves that look on him. “Don’t want you to get mad again if I remember to put up the groceries or clean the toilet or something.”

“Oh, shut up,” she says, taking her hands back, and she takes his face in both hands and kisses him. When she lets him go, the tips of his ears are pink and he looks bowled over, but in a good way. 

“So,” she says conversationally as he tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, “you gonna finish my shirt or what?”

He looks outraged but happy, and when she laughs at him, bright and loud and open, the sound fills up their apartment like sunshine even though it’s close to midnight. 

This is what she wants, everything she wants, and she wants it all with him.


	3. in other words, hold my hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josh is a cuddler, much to Donna's surprise. 
> 
> (Really, she should have known better.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably should have mentioned earlier that these little vignettes are happening in no particular order, and certainly not any kind of chronological order. It's more like "I had an idea, and I wrote it down, and then I wrote another one down." Just in the interests of full disclosure here. 
> 
> Also, with as _ridiculously_ snuggly they were in the Bartlet administration (yes, yes, I know they didn't cross any technical boundary lines, but the banter and the lingering glances and Josh's hand on the small of her back was all just A LOT), it is honestly a wonder that they managed even a lingering semblance of professionalism in the Santos White House. I can only assume there was an absurd amount of cuddling at home. 
> 
> Title taken from Sinatra's cover of "Fly Me to the Moon."

Josh is a cuddler. 

Donna thinks she should’ve realised this sooner, really. They were always so tactile, even when they absolutely 100% were not supposed to be involved, given that whole boss/assistant/one more White House scandal dynamic they had going on for eight years or so. But for some reason she never envisioned Josh as cuddly with his girlfriends. God knows he wasn’t with Amy, but Donna tries hard not to think about him with Amy, ever. She mostly succeeds. 

At any rate, he’s surprisingly cuddly. He was cuddly in Hawaii, but she mostly chalked that up to vacation and lots of sun and serotonin and all the sex they were having. In the back of her mind, she sort of assumed that once they got back to D.C. and their normal lives, once he got caught up in the furor of the White House again, that he’d revert to a much more non-snuggly version of himself. 

This is one more thing she was wrong about, as it turns out. (She’s been wrong about a lot of things, so far. She thinks she should start a list.)

He’s absurdly cuddly. Absent-mindedly so, most of the time. He reaches for her without even looking, like when they’re on the couch watching TV during their rare moments of downtime, and he snags her feet and puts them on his lap, or puts an arm around her shoulders and snuggles her into his side. Sometimes he’ll plant a kiss on the crown of her head and sigh, this happy, contented little sigh, and everything inside her will melt. She would not have believed it, even during all those years she was so desperately in love with him. No one would have believed it, she would venture to guess. Joshua Lyman, Bartlet’s bulldog, Santos’ chief of staff, hardened political operative, sniffing his girlfriend’s hair and sighing with happiness. 

It’s ridiculous. It’s the kind of stuff that only happens in romance novels, and not the particularly good ones, either. 

He’s cuddly in bed, too, which is a bit more...normal, she supposes. The sex is still amazing, several months in. She wasn’t sure it would still be so good, because every other guy she’s been in a long-term relationship with has been great to begin with and then things in the bedroom have just slowly gone downhill, but not with Josh. Granted, they only get a few nights a week where they’re both home early enough to muster the energy to jump each other’s bones, but the nights they do manage it...God, the earth shakes. And afterwards, reliably, he snuggles up to her, one arm slung around her waist, and he’ll lie there in a happy daze while he catches his breath and rides the endorphin high. She hasn’t told him yet, but it’s kind of unfairly adorable. 

They have been careful, thus far, to keep their hands off each other at work. They’re both professionals, and they fought too hard to make this happen to risk everything, but sometimes she looks at him when they happen to be in the same room for an event and she knows what he’s thinking. Once she even texted him surreptitiously, her fingers curved to hide her phone screen: stop looking at me like that. She watched him read it from across the room and bit back a smile at his grin, cocky and smug, the way she dreamed it would be seven, eight years ago. 

They’re careful, but even so, he’ll drop by her office on those rare evenings when he doesn’t have to stay late. He likes to pencil in dinner dates with her assistant and then doesn’t tell her so that it’s a surprise (even though he knows she reads her calendar faithfully every day). One evening, about a month and a half in, he slips in, eyes tired but still alight with excitement. 

“Donnatella,” he says, grinning at her like he’s conquered the world, and she feels the butterflies in her stomach like she did on the first campaign. “Want to go out with me?”

She raises an eyebrow and makes a careful mark on whatever paperwork she’s got in front of her. 

“I don’t know, Josh, I’m very busy and important and working on crucial things here,” she says primly, looking down, but she can hear him coming closer, can hear the rustle of his clothes as he leans a hip on her desk. 

“Anything I can say to convince you to play hooky for an hour or two?”

She tries not to smile. 

“Maybe,” she says, drawing the word out. “But it’ll have to be good.”

“Dinner at Benito’s levels of good?”

She does love Benito’s. He knows this, and he uses it against her. 

He shifts off her desk and comes around behind her, his hands lightly touching her upper arms. 

“You always tell me I work too much,” he points out, and brushes a kiss over the crown of her head. “So I’m taking the night off. With you. If you’ll come.”

She twists around in her chair so she can see him. Now he’s got his arms folded on the back of her chair and he’s giving her what’s she’s privately dubbed puppy eyes, innocent and warm and brown. It’s guileless and unfairly charming. 

“Joshua,” she says, slowly. “Are you trying to use my efforts to improve your health and general welfare against me?”

He blinks, as if the thought had never once occurred to him. 

“Is that what I’m doing? I just wanted to go to dinner with you. No ulterior motives. None whatsoever.”

She huffs and gets up, only to feel his hands at her waist, warm and steady. 

“Donna…” he says, tugging her back towards him, and she almost goes. 

“We’re at work,” she points out, but makes no move to shift his hands. “And that door is unlocked.”

“Your assistant won’t let anyone in,” he says, sounding smug again. “She told me you work too hard and you need a night off. She’s on my side.”

“How the tables have turned,” Donna says crisply, but turns around so she can play with his tie. 

“You’ve been a good influence on me,” he agrees sagely. He lets go of her waist with one hand so he can check his watch. “But I do have a reservation at 8:00, and with traffic…”

She glances towards the door, which remains reassuringly closed, and chances moving a bit closer so she can brush a kiss over his jaw. He goes still, as if she’s derailed his train of thought. 

“Donna…” It’s a warning this time, and it makes her smile, wide and devilish. 

“Fine,” she says, straightening his tie back where it belongs. “We can go to dinner. I’ll take the briefs home to read tonight. But don’t think for a moment that I will not use this against you at some point in the future.”

He holds out her leather briefcase, the one he bought for her her first day as Helen’s chief of staff. He had her initials stamped on the side in elegant, flowing script, and every time her fingers brush over them, it warms her a little to think of how much he believes in her. 

“Oh, I’m counting on you using this against me,” he says cheerfully as she shoves files and papers into the briefcase. “You can’t win if I’m already anticipating all your moves, Donna.”

“Uh-huh.” She clicks the top shut. “You’re so clever, Josh.”

He holds out her coat for her, waiting for her to set her briefcase down on a chair so she can slip her arms into the sleeves. 

“If only I’d known that all it took to get a compliment out of you was to wine and dine you,” he says, dramatically, and she makes an unladylike snorting noise. 

“I compliment you all the time,” she points out. She thinks about it for a minute, realises that it’s inappropriate, and says it anyway. “Last night, for instance…”

She enjoys his ears going pink more than she probably should. 

“Donnatella,” he says, half-scandalised, and she laughs at him. 

“Let’s go, c’mon,” she says, grabbing his hand, and as she tows him out of the office it doesn’t even occur to her that this is the first time they’ve ever held hands while they’ve worked in the White House. 

She likes it.


	4. all that I can give to you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Donna does not mean to sprain her ankle, get a concussion, and nearly give Josh a heart attack all in the same day. Truly, she doesn’t. 
> 
> (in which Donna has some minor injuries, Josh overreacts, and Annabeth correctly assesses the situation)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...this one is a good bit longer! Also unabashedly sweet and fluffy, but I make no apologies for that. These two deserve sweet and fluffy after all those years of repressed longing. 
> 
> Title from Nat King Cole's "L-O-V-E."

Donna does not _mean_ to sprain her ankle, get a concussion, and nearly give Josh a heart attack all in the same day. Truly, she doesn’t. It is purely bad luck that there happens to be a small puddle of melting slush that had gotten stuck to someone’s boots and then shaken off right on the entryway stairs leading up to the East Wing. It is also purely bad luck that Donna is wearing three-inch heels, walking in a hurry, and trying to read a note in her assistant’s somewhat undecipherable handwriting, which means she isn’t looking at the steps when she starts up them.

The next thing she knows, she’s flying through the air, her ankle twisting at an unpleasant degree, and then she lands flat on her back, her head bouncing off the marble tiling, and everything goes dark and fuzzy round the edges for a few minutes. When she regains all of her senses, she’s surrounded by a crowd of anxious people, all of whom are talking at her in a loud jumble of voices. Someone is saying something an ambulance and the ER, which makes Donna sit up very quickly and then immediately regret that decision.

“No,” she says firmly, although talking makes her more dizzy. “No ambulance. I’m fine.”

“I really don’t think - ”

“Ms. Moss, that was just - ”

“You really should - ”

It’s all very loud and all the words are piling on top of each other, and her head _hurts_. She looks around in desperation and, to her eternal relief, finds Paul Westfield headed down the steps, frowning at all the commotion. Paul is one of her favourite Secret Service agents (she knows she’s not supposed to have favourites, but she does, and Paul is funny and kind and never smirks when Josh steals a kiss when outside her door late at night, and really that means a lot these days). He kneels down beside her and waves a hand to shoo the well-meaning but very loud throng of people away. To her surprise, most of them back off.

“Ms. Moss, you all right?” he asks quietly, and she tries to nod her head but ends up wincing instead.

“I hit my head,” she confesses. “And I think something’s wrong with my ankle. But I do _not_ want to go to the ER.”

He considers that for a moment.

“Well…” he starts, and then things go from bad to worse because there’s a flurry of excitement from the ever-growing crowd around her, and the First Lady appears in the middle of them like some sort of tiny goddess descending from Mount Olympus.

“Donna, what on _earth_ \- ” she starts, and Donna tries to get up but puts weight on her twisted ankle and ends up falling back with a groan of pain. Helen’s eyes widen.

“You’re coming with me right now,” she says, and her tone brooks absolutely no argument.

This is how she ends up being carried back to her office by Paul, with no regard whatsoever for her protestations. This is also how she ends up with the White House physician in her office. All in all, it’s been a very embarrassing day and it’s not even 10:00 AM yet. At least Helen got called away to some important meeting somewhere else and isn’t around to witness her chief of staff’s further humiliation. Donna’s trying to be grateful for small mercies at this point.

The White House physician, who is a very kind and rather avuncular man in his sixties, gently rotates her ankle and tells her it’s just a sprain, but she needs to stay off it for a couple of days, at least. He’s much more concerned about how hard she hit her head, and he’s just started shining a little penlight in her eyes to check how they’re dilating when her office door slams open.

She knows who it is even before she hears his voice.

“ _Donna?!_ ”

She winces, again.

“Josh, it’s fine - ” she starts, but he’s already in the room, breathing too fast, eyes wide and panicky.

“What the hell happened to you?” he demands. “They said you had a concussion and they called a doctor and...you know what, we’re going to the ER so somebody can examine you. Right now, we’re going.”

He edges towards her, and she stops him with a look, which is difficult because her head really does hurt quite a lot.

“Josh, who exactly do you think this is?” she says calmly, gesturing at the stethoscope hanging around the doctor’s neck. “I _have_ someone examining me, right this very minute. You interrupted the examination, actually.”

Josh, however, is not listening, mostly because he is already browbeating Dr. Falk. Actually, she thinks it’s supposed to be Commander Falk. She really can’t remember because Josh is shouting and her head hurts.

“She should’ve gone to the ER right away!” he’s saying with a considerable amount of anger in his voice. “You’re telling me she hit her head _and_ hurt her ankle and nobody thought to even call a damn ambulance?!”

“Joshua!” she snaps, and the room goes blessedly silent. The back of her head is throbbing, and she desperately wants to let the doctor finish examining her so she can take some pain meds and put her head down on her desk for five minutes.

He’s staring at her, eyes still wide and panicky, and she draws in a deep breath through her nose.

“I was the one who insisted that no one call an ambulance,” she says, trying hard not to sound snippy. She doesn’t blame him for being scared, although he is going full _Josh_ about it and that’s a bit exhausting when she has a killer headache. “I’m fine. Commander Falk here is an excellent doctor, he’s going to finish examining me, and then I can get back to work.”

Commander Falk, who is currently leaning against her desk and waiting for the by-play to stop so he can return to examining his patient, makes an apologetic sort of face, and Donna feels her stomach sink.

“Well, actually…” he says, and Josh gives her a triumphant look.

“I told you we have to go to the ER,” he says, and reaches down to grab her hand. “Right now, Donnatella.”

The doctor shakes his head.

“No, I really don’t think Ms. Moss needs to go to the emergency room,” he says gently. “But she absolutely must go home and rest for the remainder of the day. Possibly tomorrow, too.”

Donna feels her mouth drop open.

“But I can’t!” she protests, a little too loudly. “We have the UN summit coming up, and the First Lady’s meeting with NOW tomorrow, and we can’t put off the breakfast with the AAE. Dr Falk, I really cannot stay home from work right now. Isn’t there some sort of way - ”

Josh cuts her off.

“She’s going home,” he says firmly, and she wants to smack him for being all take-charge and bossy. This is not the 1950s, and he’s not getting any brownie points for pretending to be all Gary Cooper. “I’m taking her myself.”

She _is_ going to smack him, just as soon as Commander Falk is on the other side of that door.

“Joshua,” she says, her voice low and threatening, but he’s looking at Commander Falk and not paying her any mind at all.

“She’ll need to stay off that ankle as much as possible,” Commander Falk says, and Donna can almost _feel_ the top of her head lighting up with rage. She is sitting _right there_ , she is the damn patient, and she does not need any medical professionals discussing her medical problems with Josh instead of her. Forget the 1950s, this is all starting to feel incredibly nineteenth century.

“What about her head?” Josh asks. “Do you think she has a concussion? Shouldn’t she get X-rayed or something, or have an MRI, or - ”

She takes a long breath, puts one hand on her head to brace against the pain, and yells as loudly as she can.

“JOSHUA!”

He jumps and whirls around to face her.

“What?”

She closes her eyes because she’s starting to feel dizzy again and the yelling did not help.

“I need you to go back to your office,” she says clearly and distinctly, although the room still feels like it’s whirling around her. “I need you to let the doctor finish examining me, I need you to stop taking charge, and I need you to let me handle this. Now.”

She doesn’t even have her eyes open and she still know the face he’s making, all outrage to cover up the hurt at the fact that she told him to leave.

“But Donna - ”

The dizziness is getting even worse, and now she’s starting to feel vaguely sick to her stomach, like she did when she was twelve and she tried to ride the teacups at the state fair. She breathes in through her nose to fight the nausea.

Commander Falk is talking now, trying to persuade Josh to sit outside while he finishes the examination, but Donna can’t quite hear him because her stomach is too busy staging a revolt against her. She hears one of them say her name, but she can’t pay attention because suddenly it’s imperative that she open her eyes and lunge for the trash can in the corner. She dimly registers the lightning bolt of pain shooting through her ankle before she throws up the contents of her breakfast in what has to be one of the most embarrassing moments of her entire White House career.

When it’s over and she’s hanging limply over the trash can, trying to breathe against the pain of her ankle, she starts to register that someone is holding back her hair and rubbing her back. Josh, she thinks miserably.

“Donna?” he says, very softly, all the bluster and bombast gone. “Donna, please let me take you home.”

She leans her head against the side of the trash can and accepts defeat.

“Okay,” she says.

* * *

It takes Helen Santos telling Donna in no uncertain terms that she will fire her if she steps foot in the building for the next three days to get Donna out of the East Wing, but she does (eventually) go. Donna tries her very best to get Josh to stay at work, but he adamantly refuses, and after Helen gets on the phone with the president, Donna figures it doesn’t matter much anyway what she wants Josh to do. Helen’s running the show right now, and Helen has said that Josh is to accompany her home. So it shall be.

(She thinks that Abbey Bartlet would be proud to see the kind of woman who has stepped into her shoes.)

By the time the car pulls around to a side entrance, Donna’s ankle has been wrapped, she’s been given Tylenol and an ice pack for her head, and she’s been warned several times not to look at any screens, not to read, and not to exert herself.

“Bed rest, quiet, and no working from home,” was Commander Falk’s admonishment. Unfortunately he said it in Josh’s presence, which means Donna won’t get anything done for three days because Josh will watch her like a hawk. She’d be more annoyed at his overprotective hovering if it weren’t also a little sweet, the way he worries over her, the faint line of concern between his eyebrows and the way he touches her like she’s made of spun glass.

She cuddles up against him on the way home. He smells good - it’s familiar, the scent of his cologne and the wool of his coat, the way he just smells like _Josh_. It grounds her when the motion of the car starts making her feel dizzy again. She leans her head against his shoulder and lets him hold her, and when things starts going topsy-turvy she closes her eyes and breathes him in. Sometimes she still isn’t used to the idea that things are different now. He’s got her, and he won’t let her go.

He helps her up the stairs to his apartment when she flatly refuses to be carried, and by the time they get in the door, her head and ankle are throbbing in alternating pulses of misery. Josh helps her hobble to the bathroom so she can splash cold water on her face and rinse out her mouth with Listerine, and then he is apparently overcome with the desire to take care of her because he insists on picking her up and carrying her to their bedroom.

Normally she’d make some kind of jab about how caveman it is of him, and how he’s obviously feeling quite virile and primal, but she’s so miserable and exhausted that it’s all she can do to hold onto him and not go limp like a sack of potatoes. He very gently helps her undress and put on a clean pair of sweats and then finally (blessedly) she gets to climb in bed. He draws the shades so the light won’t hurt her eyes and gets her a glass of water and the bottle of extra strength Tylenol (and then tells her three times that she can’t take Advil or Aleve because those are a bad idea when you have a concussion). She’s so _tired_ by the time she melts into the sheets, and the Tylenol is starting to take effect, she thinks, because everything is sort of fuzzy and slow. She doesn’t mind.

He sits down beside her on the bed, his shoes and suit jacket off, and she breathes in the smell of starch from his shirt. His hand gently rubs her shoulder, and she sighs a little. Then something occurs to her.

“Josh,” she mumbles, forcing her eyes open so she can look up at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

He smiles a little and scoots down until his head is on the pillow.

“In a little while,” he says quietly. “Annabeth’s coming to stay with you, but I’m not going to leave you alone till she gets here.”

Donna just blinks at him.

“Josh.” She can’t believe how absurd he’s being about this. “You can’t stay here. You’re the Chief of Staff. You have to be at _work_.”

He seems extremely unperturbed by this.

“Actually, right now I have to be here. I can go back to work when Annabeth gets here.”

She tries to push up on her elbow so she has a better vantage point for arguing with him, but it makes her head hurt again, badly enough that she slumps back down with a little groan. His face changes instantly.

“Donna, you have to lie down and be still,” he says, putting an arm over her as if he plans to physically keep her from getting up. “The doctor said you need rest. Lots of rest.”

“Yes, but Josh, you can’t stay here. You have _work_.” She feels somehow that it’s very important that he remember this. “Important work. You can’t just stay home because I have a mild concussion.”

“Actually, I can.”

She frowns and closes her eyes again. She’s so tired, and he’s being absurdly difficult.

“I don’t need Annabeth to watch me, either,” she says, snuggling into Josh’s shoulder. He has very nice shoulders, she thinks drowsily. She should tell him that more often.

“Yes, you do,” he says softly, and she can feel the weight of his arm across her waist. At the moment, she’s very grateful for his snuggly proclivities. It’s comforting, and having him here makes it easier to drift towards sleep, safe and warm and knowing that she’s not alone.

“So stubborn,” she sighs, and then she lets herself fall into the darkness.

* * *

When she wakes up, there’s still sunlight peeking under the window shades. She lies there for a moment and takes stock. Her ankle and head still hurt, but not as badly. She’s not quite as tired. And she needs to go to the bathroom.

She manages to get herself out of bed and hobble to the en suite without any major mishaps. The dizzy, nauseated feeling has gone away, thank God, and she can stand up without feeling like the floor is coming up to meet her. She splashes water on her face and stares at herself in the mirror. She looks haggard, and, unbidden, memories of Gaza come flooding back - staring at herself in the mirror just like this, running her fingers over the bruises and scrapes on her own face, wondering how it was possible that she made it out of that flaming wreck alive. She shivers at the recollection.

When she makes her way out into the living room, Annabeth is sitting there on the couch, reading from a large black binder and judiciously highlighting passages as she goes. She looks up at Donna and lays her highlighter down.

“Hi,” she says, and smiles. “How are you feeling?”

Donna shrugs and grimaces a little. “Okay,” she says, for lack of a better term. “How long have you - ”

Annabeth lays the binder on the coffee table and hops up.

“Oh, about four hours,” she says brightly. “Now, I have strict instructions from Josh. I’m to make you drink eight ounces of fluids, and ask if your head hurts and you need more Tylenol, and check to make sure you can speak and walk correctly and you’re not slurring your words.”

She grins, that sharp, quick grin that Donna first liked when Annabeth came in for her interview some time ago. Despite the twinges in her ankle, Donna finds herself grinning back.

“I’m sorry he dragged you over here,” she says. “He’s been doing a bit of a nutty ever since this morning.”

Annabeth’s eyes go soft. “He’s very worried about you,” she says. “It’s sweet.”

Donna snorts. “It’s unnecessary, is what it is. I still can’t believe he _left work_ to bring me home because I have a sprained ankle and a bump on my head.”

Annabeth eyes her sharply. “Actually, that’s very believable. And, from everything I’ve heard, it would’ve been believable at any point during the past eight years.”

To her annoyance, Donna can feel herself flush.

“Well…” she starts, not sure of what to say in the face of this irrefutably true observation. Fortunately, Annabeth saves her the bother of coming up with a response by looking at her watch and announcing that it’s time for more pain meds.

She makes a beeline for the kitchen, and Donna follows slowly, trying to keep weight off her bad ankle. She sinks into one of the kitchen chairs and watches Annabeth bustle around, pouring Gatorade into a glass and counting out another dose of Tylenol.

“He’s crazy in love with you,” Annabeth says calmly as she hands Donna the Tylenol and the glass of Gatorade. She says it in the same tone that she might use to announce that it’s a rainy day, or that there’s more traffic than usual downtown. Donna chokes a little with the shock. It’s not like she and Josh have kept their relationship a _secret_ , really - most of the White House staff know they’re together, particularly those who were a part of the Santos campaign. But, other than Sam and the First Lady, no one’s discussed it with her quite this openly.

“I...ummm…” she says eloquently, and swallows her Tylenol while she tries to think of a response. Annabeth leans back against the counter and folds her arms over her chest.

“I mean, we all knew it from the campaign,” Annabeth continues, still in that maddeningly calm tone. “But today was the first time I saw him really go all…”

She unfolds her arms and gestures wildly in a fairly successful parody of Josh when he’s upset about something. Donna finds herself on the verge of laughing and takes another sip of Gatorade instead.

“He...umm...he goes a little overboard sometimes,” she offers, and Annabeth actually guffaws, which somehow seems much louder coming from such a small person.

“That’s one way to put it,” she agrees. “Another way to put it is that he’s crazy about you. I’m really a bit surprised he hasn’t proposed yet.”

Donna does choke on her Gatorade this time and starts coughing, her eyes watering. The coughing makes her head hurt.

“Are you all right?” Annabeth peers at her suspiciously. “Sam’s supposed to come over in about half an hour and he’ll rat me out to Josh if I’ve damaged you in any way.”

Donna manages to get enough air to say, “I’m fine,” which seems to relieve Annabeth considerably.

“Excellent, I don’t want to deal with Josh when he’s all…” She waves her arms again, and Donna feels her lips twitch. “Anyway, Sam’s supposed to stay with you until Josh gets home. Unless you need me for something in particular.”

Donna sets her glass down on the kitchen table with more force than strictly necessary.

“I don’t know why he insists on making people _babysit_ me,” she says sharply. “I’m perfectly fine on my own.”

“He worries a lot,” Annabeth says simply, which may be the best single-sentence summary Donna has ever heard of Josh’s character. “Anyway. Sam’s on his way, and I’ve got to head back, so...do you need anything?”

Donna shakes her head and takes another sip of her Gatorade. Annabeth starts to walk out of the kitchen, stops, and turns back around.

“Look, it’s none of my affair,” she says, even though it’s quite clear that isn’t going to stop her saying whatever is coming next. “But if that man asks you to marry him, you really should say yes.”

Maybe getting out of bed was a mistake, Donna thinks.

* * *

Sam arrives with a stack of briefing materials in his bag and ignores all of them to watch bad sitcoms with Donna on the couch. His phone keeps buzzing with texts from Josh, which he also ignores for the most part and only answers when the buzzing reaches a sort of fever pitch.

When Donna complains that Josh is being overprotective and overbearing and generally too much of everything, Sam just gives her a stern look over his wire-rim glasses and says, “You know perfectly well why he’s being like this. So you might as well just let Josh be Josh.”

Donna thinks about kicking him with her good foot, but she doesn’t. Instead she sinks back against the couch cushions and thinks about a hospital in Germany, waking up to find Josh sitting beside her, grey-faced with exhaustion, his face prickly with day-old stubble. She doesn’t remember much from those first few hours after she woke up, but she does remember the look on his face, a sort of drawn, mute pleading that broke her heart.

She remembers too how he looked when she said his name, the hope that flared bright and hot in his eyes, sunken as they were. She remembers the way he held her hand until she fell asleep again, the way he looked at her like the fact that she was breathing and eating and talking was a miracle akin to the parting of the Red Sea.

She doesn’t kick Sam, and she doesn’t complain about Josh being overbearing anymore. They watch re-runs of _Seinfeld_ and Sam nags her to eat something and she thinks about Josh’s panicked eyes this morning and wonders if maybe Annabeth is right this time.

* * *

Josh gets home around 6:30, which is ridiculously early even for the Santos White House. He looks tired, but he’s carrying takeout from her favourite Thai place, and her heart melts. One of the problems with loving Josh is that he can be absurdly irritating and then do something unaccountably sweet without even realising how appealing it is. He’s done that since the moment she met him, really, and she’s still unfairly charmed by it.

“Hi,” he says, putting his backpack and the takeout down on the side table and taking off his coat. “How’s the patient?”

Sam looks up from the briefing material that he ostentatiously picked up when Josh came in the door.

“She’s fine,” he says cheerfully. “Donna, say you’re fine.”

“I’m fine,” she repeats like a robot. “Everyone has watched me very closely. I couldn’t even sneeze without being offered pain medications and a trip to the ER.”

Josh narrows his eyes.

“Not funny, Donnatella.”

She smiles at him sweetly.

“I’m very funny, Josh. Ask anybody.”

Sam does not look up from his briefing. “She’s funnier than you, certainly,” he observes, and ignores Josh’s pithy rejoinder of _shut up, Sam_.

“You brought me Thai food?” she asks, and Josh smiles at her.

“Yeah, and I got you the kind with tofu even though I swear it looks like someone cut up pieces of a bathroom sponge and put them on top.”

She reaches out a hand for him.

“My man,” she teases, and Sam makes a face like the two of them are entirely too saccharine for his taste.

“You want to stay and eat with us, Sam?” she asks, very innocently, and Sam gives her another _look_ over the tops of his glasses.

“No thank you,” he says very quickly. “I have a dinner with Matt Leahy in half an hour, and I have to leave now or I’m going to be late.”

He starts packing up his things with vigour, and Donna giggles quietly to herself in the corner of the couch. Josh starts asking questions about Leahy and the dinner and whether or not Sam’s going to bring up with president’s economic initiatives, but Donna’s feeling sleepy again, so she curls up amidst the couch cushions and lets her eyes slide shut for a while.

She rouses a little when Josh sits down next to her, careful to avoid her bad ankle where it’s propped up on a pillow. He’s rolled up his shirtsleeves and taken off his tie, and he looks adorably rumpled, like he’s been running his hands through his hair all afternoon.

“Sam headed out?” she asks with a yawn. Josh absent-mindedly reaches out and rubs her knee.

“Yeah,” he says, “That dinner’s not going to do him one bit of good, but he’s made up his mind to try anyway. So damn stubborn.”

Donna bites her lip to fight the smile. “It’s a big club, Joshua,” she informs him gravely, and he gives her a dirty look. Then, suddenly, his expression changes, turns from faux-outrage to something softer, more vulnerable.

“Hey,” he says quietly, “you weren’t...you aren’t still mad at me. About this morning. Are you?”

She takes a minute to parse through his meaning, and then remembers how she’d yelled at him to leave her alone while the doctor was examining her head.

“I wasn’t mad at you,” she says, and he shakes his head.

“You were, a little,” he argues. “You thought I was being...I don’t know, pushy.”

She sits up a little, using the cushions to support her back.

“Josh, you were talking about me like I wasn’t even _there_ ,” she points out, and he looks a little guilty.

“I know,” he says, which surprises her. She’d expected more of a fight out of him. “I went a little...I know. I just...after everything, when they told me you fell and there was a doctor there and I…”

He trails off, but she knows exactly what he means. She knows better than almost anyone, because she remembers standing in a waiting room and looking at Toby’s face, his eyes dark and unreadable as he says _Josh was hit_ and her world came crashing down around her. She knows that people think it gets better when the person you love gets out of the hospital, when the wound has healed and there’s nothing but scar tissue to show for it, but people are wrong. The horror never truly leaves you, she thinks. It’s always lurking there, just under the surface, the knowledge that the way your life is constructed can be ripped apart as easily as a bullet tearing through flesh, or a bomb flipping a car upside down.

“It’s okay,” she says, reaching for his hand, and then something occurs to her. She laughs a little, not bitterly, and gestures to her propped-up foot. “It’s okay, Josh. And at least it’s not broken, y’know? It could have been worse. _Has_ been worse, actually.”

He frowns for a minute, trying to get the reference, and then it hits him.

“Donna,” he says helplessly, looking down at his hands, and she knows he doesn’t know what to say. He never does when his emotions run deep like this. Then he surprises the hell out of her by turning to face her, his eyes dark in his pale face. “I wouldn’t stop for red lights either,” he says.

Her throat closes up at the words. Dammit, but how the hell does he do this to her, how does he find the exact combination of words to devastate her like this?

“C’mere,” she says, holding out a hand, wanting to touch him all of a sudden. She scoots forward a little until there’s enough space for him to come sit behind her. He moves to the other end of the couch, toeing off his shoes and wriggling around until they both find a comfortable position.

“I would’ve taken you to the ER, you know,” he says in her ear when they’re curled up together, his chest warm and solid against her back.

“I know,” she says, and threads her fingers through his, holding his hand against her sternum. “You flew to Germany for me, Josh. I never once doubted that you would throw me in an ambulance outside the White House if given half the chance.”

She can’t see him, but she _knows_ the face he’s making, pressing his lips together and frowning a little in disapproval of her levity.

“Donna,” he says again, full of reproof, and she snuggles a bit closer.

“Annabeth says you’re crazy in love with me,” she says, and she feels him stiffen behind her, drawing in a sharp breath. He’s said it before, I love you in Hawaii with a pink and golden sunset behind him, on the Mall with frigid wind whipping their hair, in their bed late at night, sleepy and sated. But she knows him, and she knows how leery he is of this thing between them being run through the mangle that is D.C.

“She does, huh?” he says at last.

“Mm-hmm.”

He’s quiet for a bit, and then he very gently presses a kiss to the side of her head, careful not to jostle her head where it rests on his shoulder.

“Well, she might have a point there.”

Donna smiles and looks at her bandaged foot, poking out from under the afghan across her lap.

“I thought so too,” she says.


	5. i only have eyes for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He just wants to bring her some coffee. And a pastry. He's trying his hand at this whole sweet and supportive boyfriend...partner...whatever they are to each other. 
> 
> And then she has to go and derail his entire thought process, just like that. 
> 
> It's unfair, really. Josh would like everyone to know that. It's completely unfair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started out all sweet and sappy like the previous chapters, and then took a WILD left turn, and I just...went along for the ride. What can I say? I have a thing for Josh getting flustered. (So does Donna.)
> 
> Title taken from The Flamingos, "I Only Have Eyes For You." (Which is not quite in the era I've kept my titles in thus far, but it worked, so...)

He starts bringing her coffee sometimes. He thinks it’s a nice touch, given how much he used to razz her back in the day for never bringing _him_ coffee. Mostly he does it because it makes her smile, and even though he lives with her and shares a bed with her and does the dishes with her on a daily basis, there is no such thing as too much of Donna’s smiles. 

He thinks sometimes that he is an absolute sap. He can’t bring himself to care. 

It occurs to him the fourth time that he brings her a breakfast pastry that this is becoming a Thing, largely because her assistant smiles at him and gestures to Donna’s door and says, “She’s not busy, Mr. Lyman. Just like usual around this time.” It had not occurred to him that Donna might leave a little space in her day in case he dropped by, or that he’d taken to dropping by for a few minutes around the same time. 

The realisation ought to make him nervous, he supposes, but Josh doesn’t have it in him at the moment because he walks into Donna’s office and finds her with her shoes off and one foot propped in her lap while she examines something on her ankle. From the angle he’s at, he can see straight up her skirt. (It’s a wonder he doesn’t drop both the coffee and the pastry.)

“Donna?” he asks, a bit higher-pitched than usual because she is quite clearly wearing the red satin underwear today and the red satin underwear does something to his brain. She sits bolt upright, shock all over her face, before she realises that it’s him and goes back to looking at her ankle. 

“God, Josh, you scared the hell out of me,” she says, frowning at her ankle. “What are you doing over here?”

He quirks an eyebrow at her skirt and sets the coffee and pastry on her desk. 

“Bringing you a mid-morning snack,” he says, and comes behind her to press a kiss on the top of her head. “What’s going on with your ankle?”

She huffs. “I have a run in my stocking, and this is a brand-new pair,” she says, sounding very irritated. “Luckily I always keep extras in my desk, but still.”

She opens a drawer and fishes out another what seems to be another handful of hose, and then stands up. 

“Go guard the door, would you?” she says, and then starts hiking her skirt up. Josh’s eyes nearly fall out of his head. 

“Donna?!” he yelps, even as he scurries for the door. “What in the hell - ”

“I don’t have time to go all the way down the hall to the ladies’ room, I have a meeting in ten minutes,” she explains. Her skirt is around her waist now, and Josh can see that not only does she have on the red satin underwear, but also that her stockings are apparently of the thigh high variety, which is so unfairly hot that he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. 

“Donnatella. Are you trying to kill me.”

He doesn’t phrase it as a question, mostly because it isn’t one. She _is_ trying to kill him, that’s the only logical explanation here. 

She gives him a puzzled look and starts tugging off her hose. 

“Why on earth would I be trying to kill you, Josh?”

He gestures wildly at her - the sexy lingerie, the skirt rucked up around her waist, the pale naked thighs. She looks like she could be starring in a porno, honestly, and he feels a bit guilty for even thinking it despite the fact that he is very definitely turned on right now. 

“Because you’re doing...well... _that!_ ”

She finishes peeling the thigh high off, wads it up into a ball, and lobs it into the trash can with fairly impressive aim. 

“I’m changing my _hose_ , Joshua, not trying to seduce you.”

She perches on the edge of her desk and starts pulling on the new one, smoothing it out over her leg as she goes, and he is painfully aware that he’s gone fully hard, which is not at all an ideal situation given that he too has a meeting in less than ten minutes. 

“Donna, you can’t just _do_ that without any warning, particularly when you’re wearing that...those…”

He gestures wildly again, although she’s situated her hose and is now pulling her skirt back down, so perhaps the reference to her red satin underwear is lost. 

She steps back into her shoes and seems to notice for the first time that he’s brought her coffee and a pastry. She smiles, wide and bright. 

“You brought me something to eat!” she says. “Thank you.”

“Mm-hmm,” he says, trying to recite baseball statistics in his head. “Donna…”

She takes a sip of the coffee and sighs in appreciation. “It’s perfect,” she says. “Josh? Joshua. Earth to Joshua.”

He snaps out of it and stares at her, still a bit dazed. 

“Yeah? Huh? What.”

She’s laughing a little as she takes a bite of her pastry. 

“Are you okay over there? You look a bit...glazed.”

He huffs out a breath through his nose. “I’m trying to calm down, Donna,” he bites out through his teeth. “After that little...display you had going on there. I have a meeting! I can’t go in there like this.”

Her eyes drop to his trousers and widen a little. 

“Oh,” she says, and bites her lips together so she won’t laugh, which just irritates him more. He’s not sure which is worse - Donna laughing at him, or the fact that he’s going to be suffering from a fairly painful case of blue balls until they get home tonight. 

“I didn’t realise you’d be...well…” She’s struggling not laugh again, and he glares at her. 

“What _else_ am I supposed to be when you’re sitting on the edge of your desk with your skirt hiked up to God knows where and red underwear on!” he hisses, well aware that there’s only a door between him and her assistant’s desk. “Jesus, Donna, anybody could’ve come in! What on earth were you - ”

“But that’s why you were there!” she points out, very reasonably. “To keep anyone from getting in.”

“Well, I have eyes, Donnatella,” he snaps. “I’m anybody.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re absurd,” she says, but she seems pleased nevertheless. “Are you telling me that my underwear really has that much of an effect on you?”

He shoves both hands in his pockets and gives her a positively murderous look. 

“Yes, it absolutely damn well does.”

Her eyes sparkle with glee, and he can’t decide whether she’s adorable or whether he’d like to banish her from the White House forever. 

“Just...keep your skirt on at work, please,” he says, trying to sound very much the authoritative Chief of Staff. Donna just snickers. 

“Okay, Josh, I’ll ask some other random gomer to watch the door next time,” she says, and gives him an evil grin when his eyes widen with outrage. 

“I regret bringing you coffee now,” he says, moving towards her desk. “You know what, give it back. I’m not bringing you coffee when you’re like this, you don’t deserve it.”

She snatches for it and cradles it next to her chest like a beloved child. 

“I’ve already drunk from it and you can’t have it back,” she says quickly. “It’s my coffee now. And you know I always deserve it.”

He looks at her - cheeks pink with laughter, clutching her coffee, so impossible to pin down and yet always so reliable - and he can’t stop himself. He circles around her desk, and, with one eye toward the door, bends down to kiss her cheek. 

“You do deserve it,” he says quietly, voice heavy with years of adoration he owes her, will forever owe her. “Always.”

She turns her face up to him, her eyes a little darker. 

“Thank you,” she says simply. He kisses her once more, breathing in the scent of her perfume and her shampoo and everything that is just _Donna_ , and then backs away before he does anything else that he’s not supposed to while he’s at work. 

“Hey, Josh?” she calls as he’s turning the doorknob. 

“Yeah?” He turns back to look at her, and knows from her sharp-edged smile that he’s in trouble. 

“Since my red underwear bothers you so much, do you want to, y’know...take it off tonight?” she asks, fluttering her lashes at him, and honestly there are days when he could absolutely…

“You are…” he starts in throttled outrage, and then swallows hard at the mental image and ends up just nodding mutely at her while she hides her grin behind her coffee cup. 

“Okay, then,” she says, and he gets out of there before she says anything else inappropriate and causes him to combust. 

She is impossible, and unpredictable, and God, he loves her. 


	6. without a second look

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which grocery shopping and discussion of joint checking accounts reveals a great deal more than Donna imagined possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am always fascinated by "slice of life" fics, where characters are dealing with something absolutely mundane like grocery shopping or checking accounts, because I honestly think these are often the moments where characterization and character growth are most apparent. We all live for the huge dramatic moments in canon, but in fic, it's the little moments before and after that really cement how we understand different characters and their relationships with each other. 
> 
> I really wanted to explore Donna coming to terms with her relationship with Josh and where it's headed in this fic. A lot of her discomfort/ambivalence here has nothing at all to do with him, and everything to do with some of the failed relationships in her past. She's slowly figuring out where she wants this to go and where she thinks _he_ wants the relationship to go. 
> 
> (Just to clarify, in this particular universe, Josh has been ready to propose ever since they got on a plane to Hawaii.)
> 
> Also, in a brief nod to real-life events...it has been an absolute hell of a week, and it's moments like this that make The West Wing so relevant and important to me. I saw a post last night that referred to TWW as "hope in the abstract," and that resonated deeply with me. I need and want to watch a show that demands that national leaders be held to a higher standard, and I'm very glad to know there are so many people out there who feel the same. That matters more than ever in this moment.
> 
> Title from "This Could Be the Start of Something Big."

Donna likes grocery shopping. 

She realises that this is a bit odd. Most people she knows seem to view it as a miserable burden at worst, or at best a chore to be gotten through as quickly as possible. She is perhaps the only person she knows who actually enjoys the process most of the time, who blocks off an hour or two once a week to go wander through the grocery store and pick up what’s needed. 

She thinks it has something to do with growing up in a big, loud family, where any shopping excursions were inevitably an exercise in wrangling five children without anyone getting run over or left behind or ending up in a fight in the cereal aisle. It also has something to do with her mother shopping at the big box stores and getting whatever was on sale, whether it was the brand anybody wanted or not. As an adult, she understands with painful clarity that this was the only way her parents could afford to provide for their kids, particularly before her father got a promotion at work and started making better money. At the time, though, she can vividly remember resenting that she never got to pick what kind of cereal she wanted or what kind of toothpaste they used. She never complained about it to her mother, but she resented it all the same. 

As an adult with bills to pay and never enough money to go around, Donna certainly had moments where she could not afford the particular brand of cereal or toothpaste she wanted, but the crucial difference was that when she picked the brand she didn’t want because it was on sale, _she_ was the one doing the picking. That was important. 

Now, of course, she’s the First Lady’s chief of staff and making more money than she ever has in her life, and she can buy any brand of toothpaste she wants. She wonders idly sometimes if very many chiefs of staff have ever been quite this excited about buying a $10 tube of toothpaste, and then decides that maybe she doesn’t want to know. 

*****

Donna is a tidy shopper. Meticulous, even, the way she is with most things in her life. She makes a detailed list, organised by section and usually by aisle, unless she’s just dashing in for one or two things on the way home from work. When she does the weekly shopping excursion, her list is always immaculate. She has mapped out the three major grocery stores closest to Josh’s — correction, _their_ — apartment, and she knows exactly what is on which aisle. She prides herself on being able to make her way through the store in one sweep without ever having to go back to a previous aisle. 

When Margaret found out about this, she nodded in close-lipped approval, the silent acknowledgement between assistants that their somewhat obsessive organisational tendencies often spilled over into their personal lives (or was it vice versa?) but that life in general was easier that way and a little obsessive organisation never hurt anybody. 

When CJ found out about it, she blinked three times in rapid succession and then said, “You are a wonder of nature, you know that?” which made Donna blush and then worry that she was a bit freakish. CJ didn’t seem to mean it as a put-down, though, so Donna decided to take it as a compliment and let it go. 

When Josh found out about it, he stared at her with his mouth open and finally said, “You do _what?!_ ” in a tone that made it perfectly clear he thought she was crazy. In light of their current situation, Donna finds this reaction hilariously ironic. 

She knows from years and years of experience that Josh is perfectly capable of doing his own grocery shopping. He’s a grown man who survived college and law school, not to mention years of adulthood after that, and he does not need a woman to go grocery shopping for him as if he were a child. However, the problem with Josh’s approach to grocery shopping is twofold. First, he rarely remembers to do it in a timely fashion, which means that he generally rushes into a 24-hour store sometime after midnight, grabs only those things he needs at that precise moment in time, and rushes back out with them. Second, on those rare occasions when he does spend a significant amount of time stocking up on necessities, he wanders about the store like a puppy, grabbing this and that and several of the other, and ends up with an overflowing cart that is missing at least a quarter of the things he actually needs. 

Both tendencies drive her a little crazy. So, when they moved in together three (almost four) months ago, Donna quietly took it upon herself to do the shopping. She makes her list out once a week and asks him if he needs to put anything on it. Lately she’s just left it on the fridge, and he comes by and scribbles in what he needs. But thus far, he seems perfectly fine letting her do the shopping. 

She doesn’t quite know how to feel about that. On the one hand, she likes her orderly method and the peace and quiet of stocking up on what they need for the week. On the other hand, it’s an abrupt plunge into a domesticity that disquiets her. It feels almost like she’s sliding back half a century, feels a little June Cleaver-esque, like she ought to be wearing a sweater set and pearls. Even when she’s going grocery shopping after work, she’s made a point lately of changing into jeans and comfortable shoes and a T-shirt, as if to prove to herself that she’s a thoroughly modern woman, that she’s not slipping in the roles her mother and grandmother played to the men in their lives. 

The other problem with this situation does not occur to her until one evening when she’s shopping for shampoo. She has a particular brand she likes and has used for years, and she puts it in her basket without a second thought. Josh’s shampoo, though, is a bit harder to find, and she can’t remember which type he prefers of the brand she wrote down on her list, so she resorts to rather shamefacedly unscrewing the tops of the bottles and smelling them until she finds the one that is familiar. 

She’s putting his shampoo in her cart when a sudden memory comes back to her, so strong and clear and vivid that she clamps both hands down on the plastic edge of the cart for support. It was a decade ago, when she was still with Alan, and she’d done the exact same thing in a Wal-Mart in Madison — stood in an aisle, unscrewing the tops of shampoo bottles and sniffing them until she found the scent he used. 

She stands there for a long, long moment, staring sightlessly at the coloured plastic bottles lining the shelf. _Hydrating!_ they scream at her, _detangling! volumising! radiant!_ but she can’t see any of the words all of a sudden because all the letters are swimming before her eyes. She did this before, for Alan, did his shopping and cooked his meals and paid the bills. She did this before. 

She breathes in, and out, again and again, and tries to remind herself that it’s not the same. It’s not. She’s chief of the staff for the First Lady of the United States now, she tells herself. She’s in love with and loved by a man who would not dream for an instant of cheating on her, who has offered her everything he is and everything he hopes to be. She has a sense of self-worth now, of dignity, that is not tied to that man. She has worked on a total of four national campaigns, she has earned the respect and trust of some of the most powerful people in the nation, she has stood in the Oval Office and commanded the attention of the president. She is not the same girl who stood in a Wal-Mart in Wisconsin and sniffed shampoo, and yet… and yet. 

She shivers once, a hard, full-body shiver, and shoves the shampoo down under a package of disposable razors and a box of tampons. She doesn’t want to see it right now. 

* * *

It’s largely because of the shampoo that she tells Josh to come with her the next time she goes shopping. She tells him it’s because she’s tired and there’s a lot to get and she doesn’t want to do it alone. Mostly she just wants to see if he’ll come. 

He does, of course. He’s chief of staff to the president of the United States and he leaves work early to come grocery shopping with her. (“Early” in this case is 9:00 PM, but she doesn’t mind.)

Donna is quickly reminded that, whatever her reservations might have been about doing Josh’s grocery shopping for him, grocery shopping as a couple is not without its own unique set of challenges. 

For one thing, Josh keeps deviating from course. She reminded him at the front door, with some asperity, that she usually went from one aisle to the next and the list was set up specifically to accommodate that, and yet within five minutes he was haring off to examine the ice cream aisle and then treated her to a prolonged discourse on the rising price of dairy products and the dubious nature of particular dairy subsidies. 

For another, he keeps putting things in her basket that are most assuredly not on the list. She knows exactly what’s on that list. As far as food goes, it’s all heart-healthy — whole wheat pasta, leafy greens, chicken and salmon, plenty of fruit. Certainly she had not put _Cheetos_ on her carefully-constructed list, or three frozen pizzas, or a large bag of peanut M&Ms. (She will admit that the multiple pints of Ben and Jerry’s were, in fact, on the list. Donna’s trying to be healthy, but she’s not insane. Sometimes Ben and Jerry’s is the only thing that gets her through a really bad week at the White House.)

The third time he does this she stops the cart dead in the centre of the aisle and fixes him with a gimlet eye. 

“What the hell is _that_ , Joshua?” she says in a tone that is calculated to strike fear in the marrow of his bones. 

He smiles, flashing his dimples in his trademark politician’s grin. 

“That, Donnatella, is a bag of chips.”

Her glare intensifies.

“What?”

“Those are not on the list,” she says, jabbing the list with her pen for emphasis. She keeps it propped against her day planner so she can cross things off without the pen poking through the paper, a precaution that seemed to both delight and puzzle Josh in equal measure. 

“Do they have to be on the list?”

She can’t believe him sometimes. 

“Yes, Josh, that’s why we have a list! And God knows those are not healthy for you. Your heart, remember?”

There’s a twinge of something in his face. It passes quickly, and then he just looks mutinous. 

“It’s just a bag of chips, Donna. I don’t think one bag of chips - ”

She plucks them neatly from the cart and sticks them back on the shelf in front of all the other bags of potato-based death from clogged arteries. 

“Absolutely not.”

The mutinous look is growing significantly worse, and for a moment she feels that perhaps she should stand down. She’s not his mother, it’s his health, and she doesn’t want to nag him. If he wants to eat potato chips, he’s a grown man and it’s his decision. 

Then she thinks back to the year or so he spent on the campaign trail, eating junk food out of vending machines and nearly overdosing on coffee, and she can feel her own mouth flattening out into a thin compressed line. 

“I am not going to watch you clog your veins with that stuff, Josh,” she hisses, shoving the cart in front of her like she’s going to use it as a battering ram. “Why the hell do you think I’ve been buying healthy food for the past four months? I want you to be healthy, not eat _this_ crap.”

He reaches out and grabs hold of the edge of the cart, forcing her to slow down. 

“Donna, it’s just a bag of chips,” he says in a tone that sounds unbearably patronising. She fantasises for a moment of running the cart over his toe, but refrains. 

“It is not just a bag of chips,” she says instead, keeping her voice low and even. “It’s your _health_ , Josh, it’s what you’re putting in your body while you’re doing an incredibly stressful job and staying up far too late and never getting enough sleep and living off caffeine most days. It’s one of the few things you can do to balance the scales a little, and I - ”

“It’s _my_ health, Donna!” he snaps, and that does it. She swings around an end cap, nearly knocking a display of canned tomatoes over, and brings her cart to an abrupt halt. She’s suffused with fury, feels it crackling out of the ends of her hair and making her cheeks burn red. 

“Yes, Josh, it’s your health,” she whispers, because she’s so angry that she’s either got to whisper or scream, and she has no desire to draw attention to the two of them fighting in a public grocery store. “It’s your goddamn health and it’s your life and it’s your choices, but allow me to remind you that you invited _me_ into those choices too, and that means that I get to worry, okay? It means I get to be terrified that you’re going to push too hard one day and I’m going to get a call that they’ve found you in a bathroom somewhere and I can’t _stand_ that, Josh, I just can’t.”

He’s staring at her, shell-shocked, but she sees his face twist at that last part. 

“Don’t you use Leo against me,” he orders in a harsh, hushed voice. “Don’t you dare - ”

She wants to cry all of a sudden, wants to grab a box of rice from the shelf behind his head and cry and hit him with it. 

“I’m not using Leo against you,” she whispers, her mouth working as she battles back the tears. She’s tired, and she always cries easily when she’s tired. Her leg hurts, too, and that’s not helping. “I wouldn’t do that, Josh, you know that. I just…”

She trails off. She’s tired, and angry, and there’s a part of her that’s thinking it’s just so much easier when he doesn’t come with her, when she gets her hour of peace and quiet and buys whatever heart-healthy vegetable chips she wants and he’s not there to argue with her and make her want to cry. 

He sees it, he must, because his shoulders hunch the way they always do when he thinks she’s about to cry, like he’s protecting himself against her pain. It’s so funny to her, the way he becomes a sort of helpless turtle whenever she’s upset. 

“Donna, don’t…” he entreats, and he reaches out tentatively for her hand, and seems relieved when she doesn’t brush him away. “Don’t cry. Please.”

“I’m not going to cry, Josh,” she sighs, and then he’s tugging her into him, wrapping his arms around her, the familiar scent of their laundry detergent and his cologne and the starch the dry cleaner uses on his shirts filling her nose. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against the crown of her head. “I shouldn’t have said...I’m sorry. I really am. I know you wouldn’t do that.”

She sniffs and rests against him. There’s a part of her that’s annoyed that he apologised because he thought she was crying, and there’s a part of her that’s annoyed that she’s apparently been cast in this grocery store drama as the emotional damsel in distress, and there’s a somewhat bigger part of her that is just enjoying hugging Josh. On balance, she decides to go with the latter part, mostly because she’s tired. 

She pushes him back a little so she can see his face, but she makes up for the distance with one hand on his cheek, linking them together. 

“You’re right, I would never throw Leo in your face like that,” she says softly, and is pleased to see the guilt in his eyes. Damn straight he ought to be sorry for saying that. “But I’m serious about the healthy food thing, Josh. I’m not going to fight you on it, because God knows you’re a grown man, but… it’s not just you anymore, you know?”

She’s not sure she said it right. She’s not sure he heard it right, what she’s trying to say here. She can’t make herself say the words quite yet, and even if she could, she doesn’t think the canned vegetables aisle is really the place. But she _wants_ him to hear them, to hear her saying in her own awkward way _I want you around for the next forty years, and fifty, and past that if we’re lucky but maybe that’s pushing it._ She wants him to hear _I want you to see your children grow up, I want you to walk our daughters down the aisle at their weddings, I want you to see your grandchildren before you die_. She wants him to hear _I can’t lose you again, not until I’m old and grey, I can’t bear the thought of all those years without you now that I have you again._

He seems to have gathered at least the gist of what she’s saying, though, because he reaches up and holds her hand over his against his cheek. 

“Okay,” he says in that dangerously soft voice, the voice that makes her melt even when she shouldn’t, the voice that kept her coming back to him even when she was so frustrated with him she wanted to quit on the spot. “I’ll be healthy. I promise. Donna, I will.”

She kisses him, lightly, nothing that will attract too much attention from passersby. It’s comforting, the familiar press of his mouth, the way his hand tightens over hers. 

“Okay,” she says, and smiles at him. He scrunches up his face in that little-boy look he has, the one she really shouldn’t find funny and adorable but does, and lowers their joined hands to his side. 

“I’ll eat your horrible dried beet chips,” he says with the sort of resignation that he usually reserves for agreeing to negotiate with Republicans, and the knot of fear and anger in her stomach loosens a little. 

“All right then,” she says, and they walk down the aisle together while she looks for lima beans, which oddly enough is one of the few green foods that Josh doesn’t actively hate. 

* * *

It amazes her sometimes that Josh Lyman is the second most powerful person in the White House, the president’s right-hand man, and yet he overlooks the simplest things. 

In this case, who’s been paying for the food he eats. 

It’s one of the extremely rare nights when he makes it home before she does, largely because she was out getting groceries. She knows he’s home because he texts her when she’s checking out, a _where are you_ that makes her roll her eyes as she puts milk and bananas on the little conveyor belt. 

_I told you last night I was going grocery shopping_ , she texts back quickly. Sometimes she likes reminding him that she informs him of her schedule and he frequently forgets half of it. She watched Leo and then CJ, and she’s not stupid. She understands exactly why he doesn’t remember it. But it will not hurt him to feel a tiny bit guilty all the same. 

_Sorry, you did_ , he texts back. _Let me know when you get home and I’ll come help you carry stuff_. 

_Ok_ , she types and then blushes when she realises the cashier is glaring at her. 

“Sorry, sorry, it’s just my…” she fumbles for the right word for a moment, because _boyfriend_ sounds so high school, _lover_ sounds both salacious and ridiculous, and _partner_ is probably the closest thing but still isn’t quite right. The cashier, an older woman with greying hair and hard lines around her eyes and mouth, sighs a little. 

“Men,” she says with a certain resigned bitterness. Donna nods. 

“You got it,” she says, and feels her lips twitch a little, unbidden. The whole interaction reminds her a little of CJ chewing out the men of the West Wing, collectively, and she misses that. There was nothing quite like watching CJ Cregg hand Josh, Toby, and Will their respective asses. 

True to his word, Josh jogs down the steps of his townhouse seconds after she texts him that she’s home, and he hauls in the groceries while she puts things away in the kitchen. It feels like a good routine, if she’s honest, and she doesn’t know whether she’s scared or elated to realise that they’re developing routines, habits, all the little patterns that every couple has. 

When he comes in with the last load of bags and sets them on the floor, she has her head in the fridge, rearranging a Tupperware of leftovers so she can fit the milk and yogurt on the top shelf. 

“Hey, did you get the - ” he starts, and she nods before remembering that he can’t actually see her head. 

“Yeah, I got them,” she says, and pulls out a container of leftover Chinese takeout that definitely needs to go in the trash. “Here, throw this away, would you?”

He heads over to the trashcan in the corner while she digs out the string cheese that he likes so much and reminded her three times to get. 

“You would not _believe_ what I had to pay for produce today,” she says, throwing the string cheese and some lunchmeat in the drawer neatly labeled “Dairy.” (She labeled Josh’s refrigerator drawers when she took care of him after Rosslyn, and he clearly never changed a thing about them since.)

“Yeah?” he says absently, digging through another bag. “Did you - ”

He stops short. 

“Donna?”

She ferrets through another bag for the sour cream and sticks it on the middle shelf. 

“Yeah?”

“Did you...did you pay for all this?”

She gives him a look. 

“No, Joshua, the nice lady at the checkout counter took one look at my charming face and told me it was free. Of course I paid for it.”

He looks both puzzled and alarmed, like he’s trying to work out an equation in his head but isn’t at all sure he’s going to like the result. 

“Donna, have you...how many months have we been living together? Five, now?”

She’s staring at him in confusion now. 

“Almost six. Josh, what’s your problem?”

“And you’ve been doing the grocery shopping a lot of the time. Most of the time.”

She nods. 

“Yeah, I have. We talked about it, that you’d come with me when you could but that if you had a meeting or something, it’s fine. I like doing it, anyway. And I don’t trust you to get the right brands.”

He ignores this barb entirely, which is a sure sign something is wrong. 

“So you’ve been buying groceries for months now. Almost half a year.”

She cannot for the life of her figure out what his problem is. 

“Yes, Josh. What the hell are you getting at?”

He’s getting that wild-eyed look now, the one that means he’s about to have a nutty, as they used to call it. 

“Donna, you paid for them! For the groceries!”

All right, she thinks, maybe he’s starting to lose it a bit. He’s in a very high-stress job, he’s got a lot on his plate. It’s understandable. 

“Josh, calm down, it’s fine,” she soothes. “Do you need to sit down for a minute, or - ”

He waves his hand frantically. 

“You _paid_ for them!”

“Josh, what the hell - ”

“You’ve bought every scrap of food we’ve eaten for the past six months! All by yourself!”

“Well, yes, Josh, what else did you expect I was going to do? Shoplift?”

He looks absolutely horrified. 

“But I should’ve paid you back,” he says, as if this is the most egregious oversight known to man. “I should’ve given you money or something. I shouldn’t have...Donna, I should’ve - ”

Ah, so _that’s_ the problem, she thinks. The money. 

“Josh, don’t be ridiculous. I can afford groceries perfectly well. I make a very decent salary as chief of staff to the First Lady, in case you’ve forgotten.”

This does not seem to comfort him in the slightest. 

“But I shouldn’t let you buy our groceries, Donna! Not by yourself. What was I - ”

He runs his hand through his hair and starts pacing, although the grocery bags don’t leave him a great deal of room to do so. 

“Josh, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re paying the mortgage on this townhouse, and you haven’t asked me to pay you rent, so I figured we’re pretty much square in terms of monetary contributions to our living arrangements. Actually, I imagine I owe you quite a bit.”

His eyes grow huge. 

“Donnatella Moss,” he says accusingly. “As if I would ever ask you to move in with me and then ask you to pay _rent_. What the hell do you take me for?”

She shrugs. “At the moment, I take you for the crazy man who’s stalking up and down the kitchen like some sort of deranged beast of prey. Any chance you could stick these cereal boxes in the pantry on your next pass?”

He ignores the proffered cereal boxes in favour of running both hands through his hair. 

“Donna, I don’t… I owe you, okay? I’m gonna write you a - ”

“Stop _right_ there, Joshua.” Her tone makes him stop in the middle of his pacing. “I swear if the words ‘write you a check’ come out of your mouth I am walking out that door.”

She can see his whole body go eerily still, every muscle locked. 

“Don’t say that,” he says quietly. “Don’t say that over something like this, Donna. That’s not… I can’t...”

He swallows hard, and her heart twists a little. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she says, feeling guilty now. “I’m not...I didn’t mean I was _leaving_ , Josh.”

He hunches into himself, arms folded over his chest like he’s protecting himself from an attack. 

“Just don’t say it, okay? Not unless you actually mean it.”

She puts down the yogurt she was holding and steps over to him, puts a hand on his shoulder and raises it to brush back his hair. 

“Josh,” she sighs. “Nobody’s leaving. Come here.” 

He puts his arms around her easily, tucking his head into the curve of her shoulder, and she presses her hands to the curve of his spine. She didn’t mean to freak him out like this, really she didn’t, but she forgets sometimes that after she quit in the middle of the bullpen, he’s been convinced on some level that she’s going to do it again whenever the mood strikes her. It irritates her a bit that he automatically assumes she’s going to leave him over something as mundane who’s paying for groceries, but she also knows that it’s hard to be logical when that trigger gets flipped. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles into her neck, and she shakes her head. 

“It’s okay, we’re okay,” she says quietly, holding him a little tighter. She turns her head to kiss his temple and feels him sigh and relax a little. “I won’t say it anymore.”

He straightens up, and she finds herself missing the warmth of his body, solid and sturdy against hers. 

“If you mean it…”

His eyes are very guarded. 

“I told you I didn’t mean it like that,” she says quickly, and he shakes his head. 

“If you do, one day…” and she knows what he’s asking. 

“Stop that,” she says briskly. “For the love of God, Joshua, nobody is leaving anybody. Particularly not over the grocery bill. But you are still not writing me a check.”

He’s silent for a moment, but she sees the lines of tension around his mouth and eyes fade a bit and knows that he’s relieved. 

“But it doesn’t seem fair,” he persists after a moment, and she knows he’s not freaking out anymore. 

“As I said before, it’s perfectly fair,” she points out, and goes back to putting the yogurt away. “You’re paying the mortgage, and utilities, and insurance, and all the rest. Really, me paying for the groceries is a drop in the bucket, comparatively speaking. If anyone should be writing a check, it’s me.”

He’s beginning to look apoplectic again, so she forestalls him. 

“Go put the cereal up.”

He complies, but she knows that set to his mouth. He’s about to get very, very stubborn. 

“It would hardly be fair for me to ask you to move into my townhouse and then demand _rent_ , Donnatella,” he says from behind the pantry door. 

“Well, you’re not demanding,” she points out, moving on to the fruit and vegetable drawers. “I’m offering.”

“And I’m refusing!” He sounds extremely indignant. “I don’t need you to give me money, Donna. For one thing, I make more than you.”

He emerges from the pantry to find her glaring at him and seems to contemplate returning to the pantry for an extended stay. 

“You did not just say that. You did not.”

He flinches but stands his ground. 

“It’s true, and you know it.”

“Joshua - ” she starts with a voice that he damn well knows means he’s about to get his ass handed to him, and he holds up both hands in surrender. 

“I’m not trying to insult you, Donna! I swear I’m not. But it’s true, and it’s why I’m going to pay the mortgage and the utilities and whatever the hell else, because - ”

“Because I’m supposed to be a kept woman, is that it?” 

He rolls his eyes, which is 100% the wrong move to make. 

“What, Donna, this is the 1920s now and I missed it? I’m supposed to shower you with furs and diamonds next, get you a new car or something?”

“I’ve seen your salary, so no, I don’t think so,” she shoots back. “All I’m saying is - ”

“I just feel a certain sense of...well, responsibility, and I - ”

She can feel her hold on her temper slipping, and she doesn’t want this to turn into any more of a fight than it already is. But there’s only one obvious solution, and she doesn’t know if she’s ready to put that to him yet.

“It’s my responsibility too!” she snaps. “Believe me, I know what it’s like to live with a man who’s mooching off of me, and I’m not going to do that to you.”

He stares at her in blank incomprehension for a moment, and then the light dawns. 

“Donna, of all the _ridiculous_ things,” he sputters. “You cannot seriously be comparing yourself to _Dr. Freeride_ in this moment. You cannot be.”

“Alan,” she mutters, but he’s on a roll now. 

“Donna, the very idea!” He gesticulates wildly, and she bites back the urge to laugh, because even though she’s mad at him, Josh waving his arms about is just generally funny. “As if I don’t owe you for every damn day you gave me, as if - ”

“Josh, no. Nobody owes anybody here. No.”

“But I - ”

“No.” There’s no way around it. She’s going to have to bring it up, even though she’s not sure they’re ready. Hell, she’s not even sure _she’s_ ready. “Josh, there’s an easy fix for this.”

He frowns at her, and she wants to laugh again. He may have a 760 SAT score, but simple matters of household finance seem to be beyond him. 

“Look, you may not want to do this, and if you don’t, I understand, but we could set up...you know, an account.”

He still looks confused. 

“An account?”

“A joint checking account, Josh. Not for...everything, you know, I don’t mean that. Just for household expenses and things. Stuff we’re both paying for.”

She stops talking, her stomach twisting suddenly. It’s too soon, she knows it. She’s rushing him into this. They’ve only been living together for six months, and they’ve been together less than a year. It’s too fast, and he’s going to balk, and then she’s going to start doubting if he’s really in this for the long haul, and then…she doesn’t know what she’s going to do, but she doesn’t know if she can deal with that level of uncertainty, not when it comes to him. 

His expression clears like she waved a magic wand. 

“Oh yeah, that’s perfect,” he says cheerfully. She feels a bit like the rug has been pulled out from under her feet. 

“I don’t mean that I want access...or should even _have_ access to your...that is…” She stumbles over her words, trying desperately to explain that she doesn’t want access to his money, that it’s the furthest thing from her mind, but he doesn’t seem to even get where she’s going with this line of thought. 

“That’s easy,” he says, smiling like this is the cleverest idea anyone’s ever come up with. “We can open it wherever it’s easiest, transfer whatever we want in, set up direct deposits every month. I think I saw that Chase is doing some kind of 5% incentive through March, so maybe we should think about going there.”

She still feels like he’s not getting the point. 

“But you’re still keeping your account, and I’m still keeping mine,” she points out. This still feels far, far too fast, like she’s careening down a mountain and she can’t put on the brakes because there aren’t any. 

“I mean, if you want on my accounts,” he shrugs, like he isn’t blithely offering her unfettered access to his entire finances. She feels the bolt of panic shoot straight through her. 

“ _No!_ ” she half-yells, and then feels very sheepish when he gives her a “what the hell?” sort of look. “I just...let’s start with this, okay?”

“Okay,” he says without the slightest hint of wanting to walk it back, and she suddenly wonders if she’s the one who’s behind in this relationship, if he has already envisioned a future of shared finances and college funds for the kids and grocery shopping together when they’re 80. 

“Okay,” she breathes, fighting the fluttery feeling in her stomach. She’s not sure if it’s fear or hope or maybe both. “But you let me chip in on the utilities. And the mortgage. And the insurance. Deal?”

He gives her what she used to call his master politician look, and she realises that she’s in for a round of endless negotiations. 

“We should talk about that…” he starts, his eyes narrowing, and she groans out loud. 

“Not until we’ve put the groceries up,” she says, and he nods as if he knows he’s going to win. 

“Sure,” he says, too easily, and she knows that it’s going to be an absurdly long night. 

*****

It takes five hours, they don’t get to bed until 2:00 AM, and she threatens to strangle him with his own tie multiple times, but they finally hammer out an agreement. She’s putting on moisturiser in the bathroom mirror when he pads in from the bedroom in his pajamas, hair damp and wildly curly from his shower. 

“Hey,” he says softly, and she smiles at him in the mirror. 

“Hey yourself,” she says equably. 

“We should get to bed,” he yawns, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I’m going to be useless tomorrow otherwise.”

She makes a face and opens her undereye cream, dabbing a little onto her ring finger. 

“And whose fault is that?”

He snorts. 

“Yours.”

She raises an eyebrow, which is somewhat difficult given that she’s also applying cream under her eyes. 

“I beg your pardon?”

“You could’ve just let me write - ”

“Don’t say it, Joshua.”

He subsides, but she can see his eyes dancing in the mirror. 

“This is good, though, right?” he asks, coming up behind her, one hand on her hip. She leans her head back against his shoulder, lets herself rest her weight against him. His other arm comes around her, warm and steady, and she takes a long, slow breath. 

“Yeah, it’s good,” she says, and he presses his cheek against the top of her head. 

“Okay,” he says. It’s quiet, but she knows him, better than almost anyone else, and she knows that he’s happy. Contented, even, which isn’t something anyone sees that often when it comes to Josh. 

“You need to get to bed,” she says, straightening up and grabbing her toothbrush. He drops a casual kiss on her shoulder. 

“Yeah, I probably do,” he says, and grins at her in the mirror. It’s a familiar look, the kind he used to get when he got Supreme Court judges and bested Republicans, and it gives her a bit of a lump in her throat that he’s getting that look now because of a joint bank account. 

“Go on, I’ll be there in a minute,” she says, and he pads off into the bedroom. A few seconds later, she hears a muffled thud and then _Dammit!_ , which means he’s stubbed his toe on the dresser again. She really needs to have him move that a few inches to the left. 

She brushes her teeth carefully, like she always does, and looks at herself in the mirror. 

She didn’t expect this, if she’s honest. She’d never expected it, even when she hoped for it, and it looks different than it did when she imagined it, guiltily and in the furthest recesses of her thoughts. 

But she wasn’t lying to him. It’s good. She’s good. 

She’s happy too. 


End file.
